Wednesday, April 30, 2014

Development indicators prick Gujarat model hype

Gujarat’s developmental model has dominated this election season, thanks to BJP’s PM candidate Narendra Modi making it a poll issue and the Congress hitting back with vengeance.
Modi showcased his state’s model to project his performance. The Congress called it a ‘toffee’ model that India does not need. TMC said the West Bengal model was better while Telugu Desam Party said the Gujarat model was inspired by the one it had designed for Andhra Pradesh.

http://www.hindustantimes.com/Images/popup/2014/4/01_05_14-metro9.gif
The parties, however, have failed to project more equitable models of development that could be adopted by the next government.
Pranob Sen, chairman of National Statistical Commission, said there is no clarity on the Gujarat model. “There is no development model that can be a template for entire country. It has to be a mix and match as different models deliver different results. One should remember that the Centre frames broad policies and the state implements them. There cannot be one central model of development,” he said.
The best way, others said, is for the states to learn from each other’s successes and failures. If one looks at state-wise socio-economic indicators, some non-Congress ruled states achieved much more than Gujarat in providing basic minimum facilities to people and in equitable distribution of wealth.
Tamil Nadu and Madhya Pradesh, for instance, provided drinking water facilities to more people than Gujarat between 2001 and 2011. They also did better in reducing infant and maternal mortality rates. Tamil Nadu recorded higher state gross domestic growth between 2005-06 and 2012-13. “Tamil Nadu has done as well as or better than Gujarat,” Sen said.
The primary school dropout rates in the traditionally backward and BJP ruled states – Madhya Pradesh and Chhattisgarh – were lower than in Gujarat. A Central government official attributed it to expansion of primary school network in these states and effective monitoring as they had more out-of-school children than Gujarat.

BJP patriarch LK Advani had patted Madhya Pradesh chief minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan and his Chhattisgarh counterpart Raman Singh for their performance, adding they were heading backward states unlike a developed one by Modi. BJP won state assembly elections in Madhya Pradesh and Chhattisgarh in December 2013 for the third consecutive time, like in Gujarat.

Chhattisgarh and Nitish Kumar-led Bihar beat Modi’s home state when it came to rise in per capital income. The reason was the low base of per capita income in these two states. Chhattisgarh’s annual per capita income rose by 11.16% and Bihar’s by 14.77% compared to 10.47% for Gujarat.

Traditionally, the northern states have been laggards in socio-economic development compared to southern states like Tamil Nadu and Andhra Pradesh. A planning commission study of 2012 said that the northern states were catching up on human development indicators by adopting southern success models Shailendar kumar 
Pgdm  2nd sem 
Hindustan
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HindustanTimes Thu,01 May 2014

Smruti Koppikar

Mr Election Commissioner, Mumbai wants answers
Smruti Koppikar, Hindustan Times
Mumbai, May 01, 2014
First Published: 08:01 IST(1/5/2014)
Last Updated: 08:17 IST(1/5/2014)
People queue to cast their vote at a polling station for Lok Sabha polls at Ghatkopar in Mumbai. (HT photo/Vijayanand Gupta)
Mumbai did better this general election than in 2009. One in two voters turned up to vote. The voting percentage of 52.6% was impressive when compared to the 41.3% last election but the effort was marred by mass deletions of names including those of well-known banker Deepak Parekh and lawyer Ram Jethmalani.
It’s a week since an estimated 1.5 to 2 lakh names from Mumbai’s electoral rolls were found missing – or deleted. It has been more than a fortnight since mass deletions of eligible voters from electoral rolls came to light in Pune, Nagpur and Amravati.
It has been six days since the country’s election commissioner HS Brahma termed these deletions as “unfortunate, shocking and embarrassing”. Brahma offered an apology to the affected voters and assured that the Election Commission (EC) would find out where and how things went so wrong this time.
The apology is a courtesy that the election commissioner showed to enraged voters. It’s welcome, but it simply isn't enough. The EC owes us all clear answers, honesty and transparency.
What we have heard from the state electoral office so far has taken the familiar official route: first a denial of the problem, then an arrogant deflection of responsibility followed by a refusal to be transparent. ?Surely, Nitin Gadre, chief electoral officer, and his team in the state ought to do better than this.
A total of more than 70 lakh names were found wrongly deleted in the state’s electoral rolls, according to sources in the commission.
If the deletions were to be evenly divided among the 48 constituencies in the state, it would amount to an average of 1.5 lakh missing names per constituency. It's a number big enough to alter the election result in some closely contested constituencies where only a few thousand votes can separate the winner from the second-placed candidate.
But, we now know that the missing names – or name deletions, as they are called – were concentrated more in the urban areas and the mass scale largely confined to mega cities. This makes the issue even more significant because in some constituencies, the number of names deleted from the rolls could be more than 2 lakh.
The impact on the voter turnout percentage in that constituency could be marginal but the deletions could impact the election result more. Besides, voters have a right to know why their names were deleted from the rolls.
Let’s take the excuses that Gadre and his team have offered so far.
He has suggested that there may have been issues at the back-end with the private company that was entrusted with the job. What a classic deflection tactic this is.
Are we to believe that the state election commission simply gave the contract to a private company and then did nothing by way of monitoring it and cross-checking with its own database? If the company made gross errors, the buck stops with the state EC.
Even if we were to accept, for the sake of an argument, that the name deletions were a blunder on the part of the company, we would like to know which company this is and how such a major blunder was allowed to happen.
Why is the state electoral office shying away from making the company’s coordinates and details of the contract public? This company is answerable to the state election commission and that answer must be shared with the electorate.
Gadre sought to again deflect his responsibility when he said that the rolls were in the public domain for six months and voters should have been pro-active in checking that their names.
Indeed, voters could have checked but why would someone who has voted several times in the past check? Newly registered or first-time voters would have had a reason to go online and cross-check.
HDFC’s Deepak Parekh and his wife found their names missing. Parekh showed his identity proofs but wasn't allowed to vote. The banker could not believe that his name could have just disappeared after all these years of voting in the same constituency.
Why would Ram Jethmalani check if he has voted in every election in the past at the same constituency? He flew from Delhi to Mumbai but couldn't cast his vote.
Aam Aadmi Party's Reuben Mascarenhas, a passionate activist, urged some 50,000 voters to register  themselves - ironically, his name was missing from the rolls.
He did not think he had to verify his own name because he had voted in the past.
Lakhs of others, who have no reason to suspect that their names would be simply struck off the rolls, did not check. We do not regularly check if our names exist on other registers such as the Income Tax or Provident Fund, do we?
?The key question: is this unprecedented massive deletion purely random in nature and the result of some computer algorithm, or is there an under-lying pattern and a sinister design to it?
The former is bad enough, but if it’s the latter, it’s more serious than how the issue has been framed so far. To know what kind of a lapse it is, Gadre would have to come clean on the issue.
Aam Aadmi Party’s Medha Patkar has said that voter names of entire slums had been deleted in her constituency, Mumbai North East. She has demanded a re-poll.
Even to press for such a demand, we would have to figure out how many deletions there were in each constituency.
In the electoral roll revision, names are routinely deleted and added but there have not been such large-scale deletions that we saw this time.
In October 2013, when the state election commission released the new voters' list, 35 lakh names had been deleted and 20 lakh added. Later, another 13 lakh voters were deleted from the list, according to the commission records.
Gadre has not apologised, so far, for this massive blunder. Whether he offers one or not now is irrelevant. He owes us some honest answers. And, soon
- See more at: http://www.hindustantimes.com/comment/smrutikoppikar/mr-election-commissioner-mumbai-wants-answers/article1-1214245.aspx#sthash.HkRM6tVU.dpuf
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HindustanTimes Thu,01 May 2014

Smruti Koppikar

Mr Election Commissioner, Mumbai wants answers
Smruti Koppikar, Hindustan Times
Mumbai, May 01, 2014
First Published: 08:01 IST(1/5/2014)
Last Updated: 08:17 IST(1/5/2014)
People queue to cast their vote at a polling station for Lok Sabha polls at Ghatkopar in Mumbai. (HT photo/Vijayanand Gupta)
Mumbai did better this general election than in 2009. One in two voters turned up to vote. The voting percentage of 52.6% was impressive when compared to the 41.3% last election but the effort was marred by mass deletions of names including those of well-known banker Deepak Parekh and lawyer Ram Jethmalani.
It’s a week since an estimated 1.5 to 2 lakh names from Mumbai’s electoral rolls were found missing – or deleted. It has been more than a fortnight since mass deletions of eligible voters from electoral rolls came to light in Pune, Nagpur and Amravati.
It has been six days since the country’s election commissioner HS Brahma termed these deletions as “unfortunate, shocking and embarrassing”. Brahma offered an apology to the affected voters and assured that the Election Commission (EC) would find out where and how things went so wrong this time.
The apology is a courtesy that the election commissioner showed to enraged voters. It’s welcome, but it simply isn't enough. The EC owes us all clear answers, honesty and transparency.
What we have heard from the state electoral office so far has taken the familiar official route: first a denial of the problem, then an arrogant deflection of responsibility followed by a refusal to be transparent. ?Surely, Nitin Gadre, chief electoral officer, and his team in the state ought to do better than this.
A total of more than 70 lakh names were found wrongly deleted in the state’s electoral rolls, according to sources in the commission.
If the deletions were to be evenly divided among the 48 constituencies in the state, it would amount to an average of 1.5 lakh missing names per constituency. It's a number big enough to alter the election result in some closely contested constituencies where only a few thousand votes can separate the winner from the second-placed candidate.
But, we now know that the missing names – or name deletions, as they are called – were concentrated more in the urban areas and the mass scale largely confined to mega cities. This makes the issue even more significant because in some constituencies, the number of names deleted from the rolls could be more than 2 lakh.
The impact on the voter turnout percentage in that constituency could be marginal but the deletions could impact the election result more. Besides, voters have a right to know why their names were deleted from the rolls.
Let’s take the excuses that Gadre and his team have offered so far.
He has suggested that there may have been issues at the back-end with the private company that was entrusted with the job. What a classic deflection tactic this is.
Are we to believe that the state election commission simply gave the contract to a private company and then did nothing by way of monitoring it and cross-checking with its own database? If the company made gross errors, the buck stops with the state EC.
Even if we were to accept, for the sake of an argument, that the name deletions were a blunder on the part of the company, we would like to know which company this is and how such a major blunder was allowed to happen.
Why is the state electoral office shying away from making the company’s coordinates and details of the contract public? This company is answerable to the state election commission and that answer must be shared with the electorate.
Gadre sought to again deflect his responsibility when he said that the rolls were in the public domain for six months and voters should have been pro-active in checking that their names.
Indeed, voters could have checked but why would someone who has voted several times in the past check? Newly registered or first-time voters would have had a reason to go online and cross-check.
HDFC’s Deepak Parekh and his wife found their names missing. Parekh showed his identity proofs but wasn't allowed to vote. The banker could not believe that his name could have just disappeared after all these years of voting in the same constituency.
Why would Ram Jethmalani check if he has voted in every election in the past at the same constituency? He flew from Delhi to Mumbai but couldn't cast his vote.
Aam Aadmi Party's Reuben Mascarenhas, a passionate activist, urged some 50,000 voters to register  themselves - ironically, his name was missing from the rolls.
He did not think he had to verify his own name because he had voted in the past.
Lakhs of others, who have no reason to suspect that their names would be simply struck off the rolls, did not check. We do not regularly check if our names exist on other registers such as the Income Tax or Provident Fund, do we?
?The key question: is this unprecedented massive deletion purely random in nature and the result of some computer algorithm, or is there an under-lying pattern and a sinister design to it?
The former is bad enough, but if it’s the latter, it’s more serious than how the issue has been framed so far. To know what kind of a lapse it is, Gadre would have to come clean on the issue.
Aam Aadmi Party’s Medha Patkar has said that voter names of entire slums had been deleted in her constituency, Mumbai North East. She has demanded a re-poll.
Even to press for such a demand, we would have to figure out how many deletions there were in each constituency.
In the electoral roll revision, names are routinely deleted and added but there have not been such large-scale deletions that we saw this time.
In October 2013, when the state election commission released the new voters' list, 35 lakh names had been deleted and 20 lakh added. Later, another 13 lakh voters were deleted from the list, according to the commission records.
Gadre has not apologised, so far, for this massive blunder. Whether he offers one or not now is irrelevant. He owes us some honest answers. And, soon
- See more at: http://www.hindustantimes.com/comment/smrutikoppikar/mr-election-commissioner-mumbai-wants-answers/article1-1214245.aspx#sthash.HkRM6tVU.dpuf
Click Here
Click Here

Delhi - [ Min25°C / Max43°C ] | city weather rss
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HindustanTimes Thu,01 May 2014

Smruti Koppikar

Mr Election Commissioner, Mumbai wants answers
Smruti Koppikar, Hindustan Times
Mumbai, May 01, 2014
First Published: 08:01 IST(1/5/2014)
Last Updated: 08:17 IST(1/5/2014)
People queue to cast their vote at a polling station for Lok Sabha polls at Ghatkopar in Mumbai. (HT photo/Vijayanand Gupta)
Mumbai did better this general election than in 2009. One in two voters turned up to vote. The voting percentage of 52.6% was impressive when compared to the 41.3% last election but the effort was marred by mass deletions of names including those of well-known banker Deepak Parekh and lawyer Ram Jethmalani.
It’s a week since an estimated 1.5 to 2 lakh names from Mumbai’s electoral rolls were found missing – or deleted. It has been more than a fortnight since mass deletions of eligible voters from electoral rolls came to light in Pune, Nagpur and Amravati.
It has been six days since the country’s election commissioner HS Brahma termed these deletions as “unfortunate, shocking and embarrassing”. Brahma offered an apology to the affected voters and assured that the Election Commission (EC) would find out where and how things went so wrong this time.
The apology is a courtesy that the election commissioner showed to enraged voters. It’s welcome, but it simply isn't enough. The EC owes us all clear answers, honesty and transparency.
What we have heard from the state electoral office so far has taken the familiar official route: first a denial of the problem, then an arrogant deflection of responsibility followed by a refusal to be transparent. ?Surely, Nitin Gadre, chief electoral officer, and his team in the state ought to do better than this.
A total of more than 70 lakh names were found wrongly deleted in the state’s electoral rolls, according to sources in the commission.
If the deletions were to be evenly divided among the 48 constituencies in the state, it would amount to an average of 1.5 lakh missing names per constituency. It's a number big enough to alter the election result in some closely contested constituencies where only a few thousand votes can separate the winner from the second-placed candidate.
But, we now know that the missing names – or name deletions, as they are called – were concentrated more in the urban areas and the mass scale largely confined to mega cities. This makes the issue even more significant because in some constituencies, the number of names deleted from the rolls could be more than 2 lakh.
The impact on the voter turnout percentage in that constituency could be marginal but the deletions could impact the election result more. Besides, voters have a right to know why their names were deleted from the rolls.
Let’s take the excuses that Gadre and his team have offered so far.
He has suggested that there may have been issues at the back-end with the private company that was entrusted with the job. What a classic deflection tactic this is.
Are we to believe that the state election commission simply gave the contract to a private company and then did nothing by way of monitoring it and cross-checking with its own database? If the company made gross errors, the buck stops with the state EC.
Even if we were to accept, for the sake of an argument, that the name deletions were a blunder on the part of the company, we would like to know which company this is and how such a major blunder was allowed to happen.
Why is the state electoral office shying away from making the company’s coordinates and details of the contract public? This company is answerable to the state election commission and that answer must be shared with the electorate.
Gadre sought to again deflect his responsibility when he said that the rolls were in the public domain for six months and voters should have been pro-active in checking that their names.
Indeed, voters could have checked but why would someone who has voted several times in the past check? Newly registered or first-time voters would have had a reason to go online and cross-check.
HDFC’s Deepak Parekh and his wife found their names missing. Parekh showed his identity proofs but wasn't allowed to vote. The banker could not believe that his name could have just disappeared after all these years of voting in the same constituency.
Why would Ram Jethmalani check if he has voted in every election in the past at the same constituency? He flew from Delhi to Mumbai but couldn't cast his vote.
Aam Aadmi Party's Reuben Mascarenhas, a passionate activist, urged some 50,000 voters to register  themselves - ironically, his name was missing from the rolls.
He did not think he had to verify his own name because he had voted in the past.
Lakhs of others, who have no reason to suspect that their names would be simply struck off the rolls, did not check. We do not regularly check if our names exist on other registers such as the Income Tax or Provident Fund, do we?
?The key question: is this unprecedented massive deletion purely random in nature and the result of some computer algorithm, or is there an under-lying pattern and a sinister design to it?
The former is bad enough, but if it’s the latter, it’s more serious than how the issue has been framed so far. To know what kind of a lapse it is, Gadre would have to come clean on the issue.
Aam Aadmi Party’s Medha Patkar has said that voter names of entire slums had been deleted in her constituency, Mumbai North East. She has demanded a re-poll.
Even to press for such a demand, we would have to figure out how many deletions there were in each constituency.
In the electoral roll revision, names are routinely deleted and added but there have not been such large-scale deletions that we saw this time.
In October 2013, when the state election commission released the new voters' list, 35 lakh names had been deleted and 20 lakh added. Later, another 13 lakh voters were deleted from the list, according to the commission records.
Gadre has not apologised, so far, for this massive blunder. Whether he offers one or not now is irrelevant. He owes us some honest answers. And, soon
- See more at: http://www.hindustantimes.com/comment/smrutikoppikar/mr-election-commissioner-mumbai-wants-answers/article1-1214245.aspx#sthash.HkRM6tVU.dpufK SABHA ELECTIONS 2014

Development indicators prick Gujarat model hype

Chetan Chauhan, Hindustan Times  New Delhi, May 01, 2014
First Published: 00:49 IST(1/5/2014) | Last Updated: 09:44 IST(1/5/2014)
Gujarat’s developmental model has dominated this election season, thanks to BJP’s PM candidate Narendra Modi making it a poll issue and the Congress hitting back with vengeance.
Modi showcased his state’s model to project his performance. The Congress called it a ‘toffee’ model that India does not need. TMC said the West Bengal model was better while Telugu Desam Party said the Gujarat model was inspired by the one it had designed for Andhra Pradesh.

http://www.hindustantimes.com/Images/popup/2014/4/01_05_14-metro9.gif
The parties, however, have failed to project more equitable models of development that could be adopted by the next government.
Pranob Sen, chairman of National Statistical Commission, said there is no clarity on the Gujarat model. “There is no development model that can be a template for entire country. It has to be a mix and match as different models deliver different results. One should remember that the Centre frames broad policies and the state implements them. There cannot be one central model of development,” he said.
The best way, others said, is for the states to learn from each other’s successes and failures. If one looks at state-wise socio-economic indicators, some non-Congress ruled states achieved much more than Gujarat in providing basic minimum facilities to people and in equitable distribution of wealth.
Tamil Nadu and Madhya Pradesh, for instance, provided drinking water facilities to more people than Gujarat between 2001 and 2011. They also did better in reducing infant and maternal mortality rates. Tamil Nadu recorded higher state gross domestic growth between 2005-06 and 2012-13. “Tamil Nadu has done as well as or better than Gujarat,” Sen said.
The primary school dropout rates in the traditionally backward and BJP ruled states – Madhya Pradesh and Chhattisgarh – were lower than in Gujarat. A Central government official attributed it to expansion of primary school network in these states and effective monitoring as they had more out-of-school children than Gujarat.
BJP patriarch LK Advani had patted Madhya Pradesh chief minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan and his Chhattisgarh counterpart Raman Singh for their performance, adding they were heading backward states unlike a developed one by Modi. BJP won state assembly elections in Madhya Pradesh and Chhattisgarh in December 2013 for the third consecutive time, like in Gujarat.
Chhattisgarh and Nitish Kumar-led Bihar beat Modi’s home state when it came to rise in per capital income. The reason was the low base of per capita income in these two states. Chhattisgarh’s annual per capita income rose by 11.16% and Bihar’s by 14.77% compared to 10.47% for Gujarat.
Traditionally, the northern states have been laggards in socio-economic development compared to southern states like Tamil Nadu and Andhra Pradesh. A planning commission study of 2012 said that the northern states were catching up on human development indicators by adopting southern success modelsK SABHA ELECTIONS 2014

Development indicators prick Gujarat model hype

Chetan Chauhan, Hindustan Times  New Delhi, May 01, 2014
First Published: 00:49 IST(1/5/2014) | Last Updated: 09:44 IST(1/5/2014)
Gujarat’s developmental model has dominated this election season, thanks to BJP’s PM candidate Narendra Modi making it a poll issue and the Congress hitting back with vengeance.
Modi showcased his state’s model to project his performance. The Congress called it a ‘toffee’ model that India does not need. TMC said the West Bengal model was better while Telugu Desam Party said the Gujarat model was inspired by the one it had designed for Andhra Pradesh.

http://www.hindustantimes.com/Images/popup/2014/4/01_05_14-metro9.gif
The parties, however, have failed to project more equitable models of development that could be adopted by the next government.
Pranob Sen, chairman of National Statistical Commission, said there is no clarity on the Gujarat model. “There is no development model that can be a template for entire country. It has to be a mix and match as different models deliver different results. One should remember that the Centre frames broad policies and the state implements them. There cannot be one central model of development,” he said.
The best way, others said, is for the states to learn from each other’s successes and failures. If one looks at state-wise socio-economic indicators, some non-Congress ruled states achieved much more than Gujarat in providing basic minimum facilities to people and in equitable distribution of wealth.
Tamil Nadu and Madhya Pradesh, for instance, provided drinking water facilities to more people than Gujarat between 2001 and 2011. They also did better in reducing infant and maternal mortality rates. Tamil Nadu recorded higher state gross domestic growth between 2005-06 and 2012-13. “Tamil Nadu has done as well as or better than Gujarat,” Sen said.
The primary school dropout rates in the traditionally backward and BJP ruled states – Madhya Pradesh and Chhattisgarh – were lower than in Gujarat. A Central government official attributed it to expansion of primary school network in these states and effective monitoring as they had more out-of-school children than Gujarat.
BJP patriarch LK Advani had patted Madhya Pradesh chief minister Shivraj Singh Chouhan and his Chhattisgarh counterpart Raman Singh for their performance, adding they were heading backward states unlike a developed one by Modi. BJP won state assembly elections in Madhya Pradesh and Chhattisgarh in December 2013 for the third consecutive time, like in Gujarat.
Chhattisgarh and Nitish Kumar-led Bihar beat Modi’s home state when it came to rise in per capital income. The reason was the low base of per capita income in these two states. Chhattisgarh’s annual per capita income rose by 11.16% and Bihar’s by 14.77% compared to 10.47% for Gujarat.
Traditionally, the northern states have been laggards in socio-economic development compared to southern states like Tamil Nadu and Andhra Pradesh. A planning commission study of 2012 said that the northern states were catching up on human development indicators by adopting southern success models
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